I am waiting to hear your God story. What happened to you to cause you to cling to a shred of evidence so you can believe you can see your mother again? I saw no mention of your father so maybe you don't want to see him again. When I hear back I will write to you more.

Hi Anthony,

I'm not merely clinging to a shred of evidence. I completely embrace God. I have more than a shred of evidence to justify my belief and of course I want to see my father, I feel terrible for excluding him in that statement.

I was raised Fundamental Baptist. By the age of 13 I had been molested 3 different times by three different men. My parents were divorcing and I was very troubled. All the false doctrine I had been taught started to reveal itself and I became angry with God at first, even practiced Atheism for several years but I never could reconcile our existence to the Big Bang and Evolution. I had no choice but to revisit Creationism. It took a few years but I discovered God's Love. God is Love, and anything anybody tells you that contradicts that is not God!!!

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when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

I'm not merely clinging to a shred of evidence. I completely embrace God. I have more than a shred of evidence to justify my belief and of course I want to see my father, I feel terrible for excluding him in that statement.

Evidence? Oh ye of little faith...

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I was raised Fundamental Baptist. By the age of 13 I had been molested 3 different times by three different men. My parents were divorcing and I was very troubled. All the false doctrine I had been taught started to reveal itself and I became angry with God at first, even practiced Atheism for several years but I never could reconcile our existence to the Big Bang and Evolution. I had no choice but to revisit Creationism.

How does one go about practicing atheism?

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It took a few years but I discovered God's Love. God is Love, and anything anybody tells you that contradicts that is not God!!!

God is Hate, and anything anybody tells you that contradicts that is not God!!!At least one of these statements displays an inaccurate understanding of god. Any thoughts on how to evaluate them?

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"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

I am sorry to hear about your mother JB. Wish there was something I could say that would help. I havent had to deal with the death of a close loved one yet, and I a definitely not looking forward to it. I lost my maternal grandmother maybe a decade ago but I didnt know my grandmother that well because she had been mentally ill since before my birth. So while it hurt, it wasnt like I lost someone I knew intimately because that person was long gone. My paternal grandmother died when he was 16, about 4 years before I was born. From what I understand she was quite the character. I'd like to have been able to know my grandmothers and I wish there was a way to.

About a year ago one of my good friends lost his mother and I'd say that was the closest Ive been to a close loss because I felt his pain in losing his mother and I was extremely choked up and sad, and I cried at her services... which is something I didnt do at my grandmother's funeral so I can only imagine if it were mine.

So the prospect of life after death is appealing, and I understand that. However appealing it may be, it doesnt factor into its plausibility. Personally, what I have done is spend more time appreciating the loved ones I still have time with, so that when the inevitable happens and all the crying is done, I can look back or they can look back and smile at the good times.

Hi Gawd,

Just because I believe in Heaven doesn't mean I don't cherish time here on earth . Heaven is home for our Spirit when it separates from our flesh. I know it won't be the same in Heaven as it is on Earth. The best part of believing that's where my parents are and I'm going is my Mom suffered for about 15 years with various medical issues. The worst being knee damage. My dad died from liver disease and no He wasn't an alcoholic. Mom had no health insurance and could not afford knee replacements on her humble income, so she suffered. Dad had insurance but his death was painful as well. I imagine my parents checking out the universe, but mostly I'm glad they're suffering manifested into something beautiful instead of just seeing them dead.

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when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

Well, while I'm sorry to hear about your parents and their unhappy medical problems, I do rather think that some of your religious ideas stem from 'wishful thinking'. I'm sure there are lots of people like you who feel the world has been unjust to them, their relatives and their friends and they want things to be put right. In this, they are no different from some of the Psalmists who complained that the righteous seem to suffer while the evil people get away with it and prosper. It was probably the reason that Judaism started to believe in a serious afterlife (before they though people just ended up in a gloomy place) where the wrongs of the earthly life were put right in a spiritual one after death.

The thing is, we want this so much that we start to believe it might be true. Yet common sense tells us that the brain with all its wired connections and so on is where 'we' are located and that there isn't a way to collect all that 'data' and to put it onto a spiritual body so that what is us carries on. No, common sense says the brain dies taking all that was us with it. We rest in peace but we don't know we are doing it.

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No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such that its falshood would be more miraculous than the facts it endeavours to establish. (David Hume)

My beliefs, my temperament, my passions and motivations, so much of who I am is a continuation of the people who loved me and raised me. And although my sweet daughter is not genetically related to any of us, I know that my parents' influences live on through her. She knows that I grew up in a household with two people who loved books, but who treated those beloved books differently. My father read straight backed at a desk, never bending the books, leaving each one brand new. My mother curled up with books and spilled food on them and folded the pages over rather than using a book mark. When my daughter touches a book gently, with reverence, she says she is being like my father. When she bends the page down on a book she is reading in bed, she says she is being like my mother. They live on. In so many ways.

I find comfort thinking about the ways they live on. Their impact is so wide spread. So many lives are richer because my beautiful parents lived their lives here on planet earth, during a time of change and upheaval.

And I also find comfort thinking about the nature of the universe. I've posted this video several times before I think, and I'll probably post it again. But when Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks about time and space and matter, I share his feeling of connection with the universe and time and space.

Hi Quesi,

That was very pleasant to read thank you for sharing. I don't think life in Heaven is anything like life on earth. If it was I wouldn't want to go at all. Heaven is the spirit realm, and I bet your Mom and Dad do look in on you occasionally.

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when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

The same way you practice at anything you try and try and if you don't get it, it's probably not for you

That doesn't seem coherent. I took your use of the word 'practicing' in a similar vein as someone being a 'practicing' Catholic, which typically means they do the whole go to church thing, pray to god thing, participate in sacraments, etc. A non-practicing Catholic is one who associates themselves with being Catholic, but maybe only does the 'go to mass at Christmas' thing. With that sort of definition, what are the differences between a 'practicing' atheist and a 'non-practicing' atheist?

If it's another definition of 'practice', similar in vein to 'practicing' the piano, could you expound further as well? I'm not certain how one practices at having a 'disbelief'. Can you practice 'not believing in the existence of wormholes?

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God is Hate, and anything anybody tells you that contradicts that is not God!!!At least one of these statements displays an inaccurate understanding of god. Any thoughts on how to evaluate them?

I'm not sure what you mean by that one.

Sorry, it was a follow up reference to an earlier post I made in this thread to you. But I still think what I'm saying is clear: you are claiming that god has a particular characteristic - that god is love. I have claimed a contradictory characteristic - that god is hate. How do you determine which, if either, of those claims, are correct?

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"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

As long as there is a shred of hope that life after death exists, this is the path I must follow, I long to see my mother again in a land without pain,fear, or sadness.

This is the source of many people's search for god, the understandable pain of loss. It is an emotional reaction, and a desire borne of a wish to have things as they once were. And anyone who has seen suffering, either up close or through reports of it, longs for a better world where these things do not happen. I think that this is why religion has survived and even thrived over the past few centuries. As science progressed and knowledge of the world grew, religion went from being something that explained the world around us, to something that answered the questions that still remained. Why do we suffer? Why do we age and die? And ultimately, what purpose does our existence serve? To come up with an answer that did not provide a happy ending was unacceptable, and religion was already there in a form that required some modification to bring it out of the past ages when our knowledge was so limited. So that's what it became, and that's what its primary purpose is today-- to answer the questions that torment some people and bring them comfort.

Ironically, I think that one of the reasons that I am at peace with myself is because of religion. Having left religion and god behind once I realized that they weren't the truth, I have never felt that fear of death, or concerns over whether life has a purpose or meaning. It has the meaning that I give to it, and it has the purpose that I find in it. Instead of being burdened by those thoughts, I find that I feel very free.

Hi Tonus, Nice to talk to you again. I have left religion behind as well. You might have left God and that's okay, but He will never leave you. There is a very distinct difference between God and religion. Without all that religion God is simply the Creator of planet earth.

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when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

suppose you made some microbes - bacteria - completely from scratch. You kept them in a little jar with mini ecosystem for them to continue living. And you wanted them to love one another. Would you really care whether they believed you existed? Would you destroy them if the didn't? Would you really love them?

If people are good, they are good despite believing in a god. The problem is that the righteous enable the unrighteous. They swell their numbers, and the unrighteous are the loudest.

That's because God is inside us all whether you believe in Him or not. I believe I'm going to need an explanation of the rest.True righteousness will squash unrighteousness, i.e slavery. Thanks for your input.

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when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

now I am not sure exactly who your god is, June, but if he is anything like the Ot god, well, he was in favour of slavery - in multiple quotes. Even Paul has no problem with slavery in the NT. That's why the Southern States in the USA Civil War argued for slavery based on their bibles. What won out with the leaders in the north who were, pretty much to a man, deists believing in only vague idea of a god who started the universe and went on an extended lunch break.

The fact is, June, that the idea of a god in everyone is all very well until we look harder at it. Then we see that the god each person espouses somehow always manages to agree with the person. On never finds a believer who doesn't agree with their own god. That's why, in the Civil War, the Southerners agreed with their god that slavery was OK.

Of course, if you think that this god inside everyone is something separate and apart from the person and not just an effect of their own subconscious mind, then we would need to see how you conclude this as evidence would seem to be in short supply. After all, how would a Catholic like Hitler do what he did 'with a god inside him' unless he thought he was a god, or course?

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No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such that its falshood would be more miraculous than the facts it endeavours to establish. (David Hume)

Junebug, these actions by the Taliban (read believers) yesterday are precisely, sadly, why theism has become so dangerous. Precisely why websites where atheists can safely argue against theists are so important.

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ISTANBUL (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday railed against the "cowardly" terrorists responsible for the attack that killed five Americans in Afghanistan, including a "selfless, idealistic" young diplomat on a mission to donate books to students.

Kerry, in Turkey for meetings with the country's leaders, said 25-year-old Anne Smedinghoff of Illinois had assisted him when he visited Afghanistan two weeks ago. She served as his control officer, an honor often bestowed on up-and-coming members of the U.S. foreign service.

At a news conference with Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, Kerry described Smedinghoff as "a selfless, idealistic woman who woke up yesterday morning and set out to bring textbooks to school children, to bring them knowledge."

"Anne and those with her," Kerry said, "were attacked by the Taliban terrorists who woke up that day not with a mission to educate or to help, but with a mission to destroy. A brave American was determined to brighten the light of learning through books, written in the native tongue of the students she had never met, whom she felt it incumbent to help."

Kerry said Smedinghoff "was met by a cowardly terrorist determined to bring darkness and death to total strangers. These are the challenges that our citizens face, not just in Afghanistan but in many dangerous parts of the world — where a nihilism, an empty approach, is willing to take life rather than give it."

I totally agree. The battle over religion does need to stop. I know we just met but I have said several times here I totally understand where you're anger comes from. You can take this or leave it but I believe you beat it with Love not anger.

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when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

Well, while I'm sorry to hear about your parents and their unhappy medical problems, I do rather think that some of your religious ideas stem from 'wishful thinking'. I'm sure there are lots of people like you who feel the world has been unjust to them, their relatives and their friends and they want things to be put right. In this, they are no different from some of the Psalmists who complained that the righteous seem to suffer while the evil people get away with it and prosper. It was probably the reason that Judaism started to believe in a serious afterlife (before they though people just ended up in a gloomy place) where the wrongs of the earthly life were put right in a spiritual one after death.

The thing is, we want this so much that we start to believe it might be true. Yet common sense tells us that the brain with all its wired connections and so on is where 'we' are located and that there isn't a way to collect all that 'data' and to put it onto a spiritual body so that what is us carries on. No, common sense says the brain dies taking all that was us with it. We rest in peace but we don't know we are doing it.

Hello Wheels,

I do not feel like my faith is wishful thinking. It is something I have developed over many years of studying and contemplating. It is not some rash decision made during the grieving process. My faith was already starting to mature by the time I lost my parents. I believe in God because I believe it took intelligence to have such a complex planet.

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when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

The same way you practice at anything you try and try and if you don't get it, it's probably not for you

That doesn't seem coherent. I took your use of the word 'practicing' in a similar vein as someone being a 'practicing' Catholic, which typically means they do the whole go to church thing, pray to god thing, participate in sacraments, etc. A non-practicing Catholic is one who associates themselves with being Catholic, but maybe only does the 'go to mass at Christmas' thing. With that sort of definition, what are the differences between a 'practicing' atheist and a 'non-practicing' atheist?

If it's another definition of 'practice', similar in vein to 'practicing' the piano, could you expound further as well? I'm not certain how one practices at having a 'disbelief'. Can you practice 'not believing in the existence of wormholes?

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God is Hate, and anything anybody tells you that contradicts that is not God!!!At least one of these statements displays an inaccurate understanding of god. Any thoughts on how to evaluate them?

I'm not sure what you mean by that one.

Sorry, it was a follow up reference to an earlier post I made in this thread to you. But I still think what I'm saying is clear: you are claiming that god has a particular characteristic - that god is love. I have claimed a contradictory characteristic - that god is hate. How do you determine which, if either, of those claims, are correct?

Dawg,

I think it's silly for you to pick apart the word "practice", you know what I meant from the beginning. I was Atheist for 8/9 years. I absolutely did not believe in God. I changed my mind and I'm so glad I did.

Let's see, let's compare the evidence. The planet is beautiful, we have all that we need to survive and our bodies are mostly comfortable.God Is Love or else things could be a lot worse. He could have put our face where our butt is, that would be hateful.

Jesus also said to obey the commandments found in the old testaments. Many of those commandments involves punishment by death (usually stoning). How do we "love one another" when we're required to kill for minor transgression? (such as picking up sticks on the wrong day)

suppose you made some microbes - bacteria - completely from scratch. You kept them in a little jar with mini ecosystem for them to continue living. And you wanted them to love one another. Would you really care whether they believed you existed? Would you destroy them if the didn't? Would you really love them?

Do you have kids? Do you want them to know who you are?Would you still Love them if they didn't?

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when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

Jesus also said to obey the commandments found in the old testaments. Many of those commandments involves punishment by death (usually stoning). How do we "love one another" when we're required to kill for minor transgression? (such as picking up sticks on the wrong day)

Hi Aaron,

Big fan of Jesus, and you will have to give me book and chapter where Jesus said this because I do not recall Jesus saying this. I know Jesus was against stoning and killing. Jesus is the Prince of Peace. I remember the story of the prostitute, the crowd around wanted to throw stones and Jesus said,"let the first man here without sin throw the first stone." Jesus also denounced the Old Testament law of the Sabbath by asking the Pharisee if your Ox is stuck in the ditch will you wait until the next day to get him out? That's what got Him crucified!

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when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

I think it's silly for you to pick apart the word "practice", you know what I meant from the beginning. I was Atheist for 8/9 years. I absolutely did not believe in God. I changed my mind and I'm so glad I did.

I did not mean to be disingenuous. I genuinely, truly, did not understand what you meant by 'practice'. What you just described to me is that you did not believe god existed for 8/9 years. Fine. We can just leave it at that then.

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Let's see, let's compare the evidence. The planet is beautiful, we have all that we need to survive and our bodies are mostly comfortable.God Is Love or else things could be a lot worse. He could have put our face where our butt is, that would be hateful.

Other evidence:Starving childrenFloodsEarthquakesHurricanesWarRapeMurderHellCalvinismCancerMental illnessSuicide bombingThe HolocaustWitch huntsDenial of human rightsComplete lack of god either address these issues or clearly explaining why they happenTortureCar accidentsChernobylPovertyPeople drowning their children in the name of godPeople shoving planes into buildings in the name of godPeople beheading witches in the name of godPeople jailing bloggers in the name of god

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

suppose you made some microbes - bacteria - completely from scratch. You kept them in a little jar with mini ecosystem for them to continue living. And you wanted them to love one another. Would you really care whether they believed you existed? Would you destroy them if the didn't? Would you really love them?

Do you have kids? Do you want them to know who you are?Would you still Love them if they didn't?

We're not talking about children. Children are little versions of us that will eventually grow into mature versions of us. We are not children of yhwh. We will never grow into gods.

yhwh is the alpha and the omega. The omnipotent creator of the universe. Perfect. Eternal. Unchanging.

yhwh manufactured you. You are its product. We are less complicated to it than a bicycle is to us. Comparing people to bateria does not even come close to describing how much greater yhwh is than us. It is completely alien to us and our understanding.

To say that you are the offspring of that entity is hubris in the extreme.

suppose you made some microbes - bacteria - completely from scratch. You kept them in a little jar with mini ecosystem for them to continue living. And you wanted them to love one another. Would you really care whether they believed you existed? Would you destroy them if the didn't? Would you really love them?

Do you have kids? Do you want them to know who you are?Would you still Love them if they didn't?

Yes, yes, and yes. The main difference is that I wouldn't hide from them and purposely design an environment which shows no sign of my existence. I also wouldn't have someone else write some obscure, self-contradictory text before they were born and expect them to believe in me or love me based on it.

Let's take the example of a remote tribe of people who have no previous notion of "god", and no communication with the rest of the world. Barring a human visitor from outside their tribe, how exactly are they supposed to know about it?

Oh, and your views on atheism need some adjustment.

1. It isn't capitalized. For the same reason theism isn't.2. You don't practice it. For the same reason that you don't practice not collecting stamps.3. It isn't a choice, at least not in the most common use of the word choice. It's not like choosing what to have for lunch. It's more akin to "choosing" whether or not to believe in Santa Claus after reaching the age of reason. If I gave you a story about how Santa has had a profound influence on my life, and how he helped me through some extremely tough times, would you believe in him? Really, truly believe? How about fairies? Leprechauns? The Invisible Pink Unicorn?

As for getting you through tough times...the belief itself is what got you through, not some mysterious invisible entity.

« Last Edit: April 11, 2013, 02:14:02 PM by Petey »

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He never pays attention, he always knows the answer, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy.-– Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Big fan of Jesus, and you will have to give me book and chapter where Jesus said this because I do not recall Jesus saying this. I know Jesus was against stoning and killing. Jesus is the Prince of Peace. I remember the story of the prostitute, the crowd around wanted to throw stones and Jesus said,"let the first man here without sin throw the first stone." Jesus also denounced the Old Testament law of the Sabbath by asking the Pharisee if your Ox is stuck in the ditch will you wait until the next day to get him out? That's what got Him crucified!

Matthew 5:17-20Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

This sounds like he's saying that the old testament laws are still valid.

Even pushing this aside, there's still the idea that god and Jesus are one and the same (at least for those that follows the idea of the trinity). So when god commanded those death penalty laws in the old testaments, it was really Jesus making those commands.

junebug72, it is very annoying to have people claim, with no evidence, stuff like "god is inside all of us".

That does not mean anything at all. It is the same as saying Thor, a tiny blue smurf or a magic invisible apple pie is inside all of us. You may as well say Lassie the wonder dog is inside all of us, with the exception that there actually was a real Lassie.

What is this god inside? What is it made of? Is it just one god in everyone, or a different one in each person? How do you know it is inside everyone? (It may be only inside some people, but not 2-year old children, people who never heard of god, people who don't believe in god, people who are severely developmentally disabled, people in comas, people with dementia, mass murdering sociopaths.)

Where exactly is the god inside? In the brain? Somewhere else?

When exactly does god get inside us? At conception? At implantation? When the fetus has a heartbeat? At birth? Sometime later? Or was god always "there" floating around the sperm and egg?

When the person dies, where does the god inside go?

How would you possibly test this idea? If you can't test or prove this, what is your belief based on?

You have get at least this far-- establishing that clearly there is a supernatural being inside each and every human and this is how we can tell. Then you have to explain how you understand the nature of the god inside-- good, knowable, eternal, powerful, or whatever.

Do you have kids? Do you want them to know who you are?Would you still Love them if they didn't?

Yes. Yes. And this is just nonsense. At best, I could love the idea of them. I couldn't love them, they would be strangers to me.

To look at this from the other side: I'm adopted and have never met either of my biological parents. Based on the limited information I have available to me, and my own experiences as a parent and a human, my biological mother does NOT love me in the way you are using the word. It's impossible - she doesn't know me, or anything about me. She may very well "love" the infant she gave up for adoption but that infant is not me, and hasn't been me for more than 40 years. Further, I don't believe it's possible to love someone you don't know; if you claim you do, what you are really saying is you love YOUR version of that person - who may have nothing in common with the idealized person you've created in your head.

I can assert that I "love" my fellow man, but what I actually mean is that I have compassion for, and a shared sense of identity with, these unknown people. That's a stretch of the word "love" to me, but YMMV.

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“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

Dear Junebug, you cannot convince someone who does not want to believe to believe. As the resident flaky, doubtful theist, I am here not to convert, but to coexist. When I express my views it is for exhibition, not out of any expectation that anyone will change their minds. This is not a site where people come looking for God. I think many of the members here have been deeply hurt by religious people and possibly by unfulfilled faith. I care very deeply for people in general and try to show it through my actions. I feel that is the main thing Jesus teaches me. But if I stop believing in Him tomorrow I will still be a caring person.

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It doesn't make sense to let go of something you've had for so long. But it also doesn't make sense to hold on when there's actually nothing there.

I think many of the members here have been deeply hurt by religious people and possibly by unfulfilled faith.

I think you'd find that most of the members here who used to be theists would not attribute their deconversion to anything even close to that. What you will find is that they were enlightened by pursuit of truth and learning to think critically. But don't take my word for it (though that is the case for me), ask around. I recall a few past threads discussing that very topic.

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He never pays attention, he always knows the answer, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy.-– Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Dear Junebug, you cannot convince someone who does not want to believe to believe.

I'm just going to agree with Dante on this one.

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As the resident flaky, doubtful theist, I am here not to convert, but to coexist. When I express my views it is for exhibition, not out of any expectation that anyone will change their minds. This is not a site where people come looking for God.

Mostly true, but a few do show up determine to make us agree that he's real.

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I think many of the members here have been deeply hurt by religious people and possibly by unfulfilled faith.

THIS is the part I object to - many of us have stated quite clearly how we came to be atheists, yet you continue to dismiss OUR explanations about how we drew our conclusions, in favor of your own.

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I care very deeply for people in general and try to show it through my actions. I feel that is the main thing Jesus teaches me. But if I stop believing in Him tomorrow I will still be a caring person.

And this is why we continue to assert that GOD is NOT required for people to be decent human beings.

I believe you when you indicate that IRLTM you are a decent, compassionate person who tries hard to "live and let live". What I don't quite know how to reconcile is your persistent belief that we don't know our own lives.

Edited for punctuation error

« Last Edit: April 11, 2013, 04:01:36 PM by Jag »

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“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter